I guess this heading got your attention!

I contracted gonorrhea at the age of 19. My Italian* boyfriend, who also happened to be a heroin addict and a male prostitute passed it on to me. He died of AIDS sometime in the 1980s.

*I say Italian because he was accepted into my Italian family because of his ethnicity, nothing else seemed to matter.

I was 19 and naïve and it was the 1960s, which was a highly volatile time in my life and history. I knew he was a heroin addict, always thinking he was going to quit. But I didn’t know he was a male prostitute. Actually it didn’t dawn on me until years later as I was revisiting this situation during one of my “emotional release” workshop experiences. It’s the late 1970s and I am a participant in an emotional release group and all of a sudden the revelation hits me! It actually shook me to the core because I thought: “how could I have not known that?” I wanted to drop into deep shame for my innocence. I didn’t see it as a beautiful part of myself. I saw it with a critical voice for what I didn’t see at the time. I was fortunate to be held and nurtured through all of my feelings by a woman therapist who taught me to scream and release everything that I was holding in my body.

Back to 1968: I am home sleeping in the bedroom that I shared with my sister. I awake with excruciating pains in my abdomen. I am bent over in pain and I wake my sister who happens to be a nurse. She says “we have to get you to the hospital.” She wakes my father and he drives us to the hospital where my sister works. She knows everyone so we are taken immediately into a room. My father waits outside. A doctor examines me and states that I have gonorrhea. How did he immediately know this? Who knows? Things were different then. Was life simpler? Were there not as many diseases? It was before AIDS. My immediate thought was “my father is going to kill me!” I look at my sister and I am more panicked about my father knowing this and I say to her “don’t tell Daddy!”

So of course my father doesn’t want to know anyway because it’s a “woman issue” and there are no words that will make him comfortable. So it all works out in my favor because my father is too embarrassed to even ask and I am in shock over what I have in my body. And my sister, who is the nurse, is calm and clear and taking care of business for me. She was and still is the strong silent one to my outbursts. We are a good pair!

I go home and have no memory of what happens over the next few weeks except that I am on massive doses of antibiotics. OH.. but when I left the hospital emergency room the doctor casually says.. “You seem to have had this for a while and it seems to have severely inflamed your ovaries and I am not sure if your ovaries will ever function normally again.” What??? What does this mean? But as I said, I don’t have much recollection of the next few weeks. When I did return to the doctor he told me that I most likely would never be able to have children. What? I don’t recall much of the next year of my life.

Joey, the boyfriend, confessed that he had something going on (in his penis), which I will lovingly refer to him now as, the prick. No anger here just some comic relief for all of you who are still reading this. Back to Joey ~ the prick~ he didn’t think much of it? WHAT! OK, he was a dope addict. He didn’t think much of anything except where he was getting his next fix. We broke up!

Why do I share this story? A friend and I were talking about children and what it means for a woman to have them or make a conscious decision to not have them. That decision was made for me in that moment of my life. And then things changed. I started learning about herbs and Chinese medicines and energy work. In that instant I devoted my life to understanding my body. Understanding what motivated me. Understanding how I can be more in contact with myself. It was one of the defining moments that changed my LIFE!

My body healed itself and I got pregnant 9 years later. I did not have the baby and that is a story for another time.

The moral of this story is:

Shit happens! Life is messy! Life can be complicated! And it’s what we choose to do with all the mess that creates the life we live!

I know you have many stories of your own because we all do! We all have things that we have done. Things that have happened to us, around us and near us. These stories are what make us who we are. Let your stories inform you and not lead you. Let your stories be like fiction. You can feel them, intimately know them, like great characters in books and then utilize them to enhance and expand your life.

I LOVE my life stories! They are mine and I will never deny or ignore how each story is a valuable part of me. Each story has helped mold me into who I am today.

HOW ABOUT YOU?